Developing Strategies for Change

Introduction

Change is a dynamic process in which an imbalance between driving and restraining forces moves behavior to a new level where the forces reach a new state of equilibrium. Common strategies used to evoke change are power-coercive, empirical-rational, and normative-reeducative. In power-coercive strategies, legitimate authority, economic sanctions, or political clout is used to enforce change and handle resistance. The premise behind the empirical-rational approach is that people are rational and will accept a change that is in their best interest. The normative-reeducative approach is based on the assumption that people respond to social norms and values. Hence, roles, relationships, perceptual orientations, attitudes, and feelings influence the acceptance of change. Agents using a normative-reeducative approach collaborate with the group to effect change.

Instructions

In the Scenario below, identify at least four (4) driving forces and four (4) restraining forces. Explain your reasoning.

Develop an action plan including at least three (3) possible approaches for each of the following strategies (for example, an extreme power-coercive strategy would be to state that anyone who cannot go along with the change will need to look for another position):

Power-coercive strategies

Empirical-rational strategies

Normative-reeducative strategies

Scenario

You are the nurse manager on a unit that has had all RN staff until about six months ago. At that time, nursing assistants (NAs) were added and assigned a set of tasks  mostly personal care, bathing, and errands for the unit  that they do for all patients on the unit. NAs were not assigned to work with particular nurses, only to a group of patients who might have several different RNs caring for them. Therefore, NAs did not have coaching and supervision in patient care. You believe that better care could be provided to patients if nurses and NAs worked in teams to care for designated groups of patients. You discuss it with your director and find that she is enthusiastic and will support your efforts. You recognize that the RN staff will need some additional education in delegation and coaching to make this work well. They liked taking complete care of their own patients, and have accepted, but not enthusiastically, having nursing assistants on the unit. You are ready for the first step of considering how you will approach making sure this change is successful.

This activity contains 3 questions.

Based on your force field analysis, how easy or difficult do you believe change will be in this situation? (Note that you have completed an assessment of the situation.)

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

How can you shift the balance of the restraining forces to assure that change will be successful?

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

Which of the strategies and approaches would you prefer to use to bring about change? Explain.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

The Submit Answers for Grading feature requires scripting to function. Your browser either does not support scripting or you have turned scripting off.

So, the Submit Answers for Grading button below will not work.

The following Submit Answers for Grading button is provided in its place and will clear your answers:
The Clear Answers and Start Over feature requires scripting to function. Your browser either does not support scripting or you have turned scripting off.

So, the Clear Answers and Start Over button below will not work.

The following Clear Answers button is provided in its place and will clear your answers: